[This article appeared in the February 1987 issue of The St. Croix Review, pp. 14-19.]

The Iran/Contra Affair: An Essentially Ideological Crisis

Dwight D. Murphey

The recent furor over the administration’s covert dealings with
Iran and the Contras has been presented by the
media, and accepted by most politicians and the public, as the uncovering of a
scandal.Dwight Murphey disagrees.The crisis, he says, is almost entirely the product
of liberal ideology and of a corresponding impotence and silence that afflicts
America’s inarticulate majority.

I can think
of no better example historically of the power of ideology than the recent
furor over the Reagan administration’s dealings with Iran
and the funneling of money to the Contras in Nicaragua.The hysteria has shown, with more immediacy
than any other case that I can recall, the incredible extent to which ideology
can be used as a battering ram when a single point of view is in a position to
impose its own semantic and perspective.

Day after
day, press dispatches and television disclosures have stripped away successive
layers of what is characterized most mildly as a “blunder,” but more often as a
“scandal” or even as a “criminal conspiracy.”

There are
speculations about “implicated parties” and there are dramatic demands, by
those who deliberately evoke the memory of Senator Baker’s famous inquiry
during the Watergate hearings, to know “what the president knew and when he
knew it.”Investigative committees are
set up, special prosecutors called for.Public opinion polls are cited showing a growing loss of credibility on
the part of the president.

Does anyone
stop to think what a sham all of this is?What a false premise it is based on?That the fundamental assumptions underlying the pointing-with-alarm are
false?

Who is
prepared to point out that it is not a criminal conspiracy that is being spread
out for all to see, but a series of covert initiatives by the government of the
United States that have involved some of the most sensitive issues of international
affairs?That, indeed, the public
disclosure of those initiatives is treasonable in the extreme?

We have
clearly lost our ability, as a people, to analyze anything critically.This means that we are easy prey to
ideological manipulation.

It is
commonplace today that it often seems totally out of fashion to voice even the
simplest of truths.That common sense is
“out of step” has become obvious within the ideological milieu of the last
quarter-century in the United States.

We live,
for example, at a time when literally tens of thousands of people are expected
to die from a disease that is spread primarily by anal intercourse and drug
addicts’ dirty needles.A more
incredible prospect would be hard to imagine.Common sense dictates that people see an imperative reason to affirm,
once again, the wisdom of monogamous marriage and personal morality.But what do the current oracles in the media
and our intellectual culture have to suggest?Only that the taxpayers provide readily-available disposable needles for
addicts and that those who are promiscuous engage in “responsible
sex”—how?By using more condoms!

What is
perhaps even more insane than the ideology of the oracles is the fact that
people accept such nonsense without any seeming awareness of just how ludicrous
it is.We have come to live permanently
within an envelope of ideas formed of sheer illusion.

The
“issues,” most of them sham, that are raised by the recent Iranian furor would
require a lengthy discussion to air in full.But here, it seems to me, are some of the more important facets that the
American people should keep in mind about it:

1.We must start with the premise that it is
imperative for the United States
to take the leadership in opposing a Communist victory in Central
America.It is intolerable
that there should be a Marxist-Leninist regime there at all.An essential reality is that Mexico, our
teeming neighbor to the south, is no tower of strength; those who oppose any
effort to oust the Sandinistas can give no guarantee that Mexico, too, will not
soon become the target of a revolutionary movement and that there will not be
those who, as soon as such a movement begins, will start to scream about that
country’s “oppressive regime.”

2.It is a related but nevertheless separate
point to say that the United States
must, given the present condition of the world and of domestic ideology, pursue
a wide network of covert activities.Covert initiatives are essential for at least three reasons.

First, there
is much that can be accomplished by working quietly and effectively.There is no doubt what the administration was
attempting to do, with a wisdom that I could only evaluate if I had all of the
information that the administration had at the time, when it sought to rebuild
ties with at least some elements within Iran.Iran is
strategically a vitally important country.To accept permanently a relationship of avowed hostility is certainly
not in the interests of the United States
or the free world.

Second,
covert activities can often serve as a lower-keyed substitute for what would
otherwise be open confrontation involving American forces.This can mute the dangers inherent in the
“protracted conflict” that exists between the free world and Communism.

Third, the
domestic ideological situation makes covert initiatives essential.At the same time that it is imperative for
the United States
to be the leader of the free world, an adversarial media, acting according to a
very different agenda, possesses a veto-power over any vigorous expression of
American will.The practical choice for
presidents is often either to take covert action or to take no action at all.

This last
point tells us what is really most at stake in the recent “scandal.”It is a question of power.The liberal intellectual culture cannot
tolerate covert activities that circumvent the veto-power that it so
passionately seeks to maintain over how we think and what we do.

3.We need to arrive at an open realization
about some basic facts that relate to the divisions within our country.These divisions are neither shallow nor
temporary.They reflect the fundamental
cleavage that has existed within Western civilization for a century and a half
between the predominant middle class culture and the alienated intellectual
culture.

Since the
election of 1980, the existence of the Reagan administration has given
conservative Americans an impression that the country has “returned to
normal.”What has become apparent,
however, is that during those same years the American people have become
increasingly dominated by the ideology of fashionable liberalism.This is the ideology that moved Amy Carter,
for example, when she sought faddishly to get herself arrested during a New
Left-style protest against C.I.A. recruitment on the Amherst
campus.It is the ideology that has
created the drumbeat of hostility toward South
Africa, calling for displacement of the
Afrikaners by black majority rule despite all of the lessons that are so
apparent from the experience of the rest of black Africa.

Although it
is almost never commented upon, who among us does not sense the implicit threat
that this ideology makes to “tear the country apart,” even more explosively
than it did during the Vietnam War, if anything more than half-measures are
taken in Nicaragua or against any Communist movement?

Distinct
from this ideology, there exists the great bulk of the American people.Unfortunately, we as a people are so absorbed
in the daily round of practical affairs that we take little interest in forming
and articulating general ideas.In this,
we repeat the historic weakness of the “bourgeoisie” with respect to
intellectual culture.We resign to an
alienated intellectual culture and to its associated adversarial media the
essential intellectual and spiritual tasks of our civilization.

Those who
champion the values of the American majority find themselves chronically
consigned to an ineffectual and muted role.This is why we now stand by with only the most impotent frustration
while an ideological wolf-pack seeks to destroy not just yet another American
president but a man as decent and capable as Ronald Reagan.

4.The potential for a constitutional crisis
every bit as severe as that which occurred immediately following the Civil War between
the “radical Republicans” in Congress and President Andrew Johnson is created
when Congress, reacting to the pressures created by fashionable liberalism,
legislates a limit on the president’s conduct of foreign policy, as it did when
the Boland Amendment barred American support for the anti-Communist insurgents
in Nicaragua.

We recall
that after Lincoln was assassinated
the Congress enacted a law to the effect that the president could not discharge
a member of his cabinet without the consent of the Senate.When President Andrew Johnson fired Secretary
of War Stanton, impeachment charges were brought by the House.The impeachment failed by only one vote when
it was tried in the Senate.

In the United
States today, we have a situation in which
presidents will feel it imperative to take action in many parts of the
world.At the same time, liberal
ideology forbids it.When the Congress
legislates in conformity with that ideology, it sets the stage for a
constitutional crisis unless the president becomes passive.

No doubt
the executive branch, as an overall generalization, should conform its actions
to the law.But things aren’t that
simple.We need to realize the
disastrous abandonment of responsibility that occurs when Congress succumbs to
the demands of liberal ideology in foreign affairs.And we need to realize, too, that the role of
the Congress in legislating mandates of foreign policy, which of necessity is
very much a responsibility of the president, other than for a declaration of
war, raises extremely difficult and subtle Constitutional issues that have
never been fully resolved.It is by no
means a foregone conclusion that the Boland Amendment was Constitutional and
hence lawful.

5.There are a number of points of a less
sweeping nature, but that bear on the current crisis:

As I
suggested earlier, what has been conducted is a “trial by semantics.”President Reagan’s original statement said
that the administration had sought a connection with Iran
for four important reasons of policy.But
the media has brushed aside the premise that the operation was undertaken in
good faith in pursuit of valid, even though quite obviously arguable, policy
objectives.

Both the
media and the many petty politicians who have scurried around in the crisis have
insisted on characterizations that are, but that ought not to be, implicitly
accepted.At the mildest, they have
referred to a “blunder” and have insisted that “to get all of this behind him”
the president “must admit to having made mistakes,” as though that were some
generally recognized universal solvent.Beyond that, the media has unfolded the drama as though it were
revealing a criminal conspiracy, with calls for special prosecutors, frequent
references to “the scandal,” and speculations about the “implicated parties.”

We need to
understand that the whole frame of reference is fashioned by the manner in
which the revelations are presented.Even the administration itself has been forced into a “bunker mentality”
that accepts the characterizations.

It should
be readily apparent that there is enormous hypocrisy in the media’s hue and cry
about criminal misconduct.We recall the
cries of anguish that were raised a few years ago when President Nixon
inadvertently spoke about Charles Manson as though he were guilty before he had
been tried and convicted.Where is that
sensibility today, that over-weening solicitude that no one be other than
“allegedly” guilty before trial?

Americans
should be conscious of the fact that they have come to accept an enormous
change about the public revelation of government secrets.There was a time, indeed within the memory of
some of us now living, when it was considered treasonable to do what the media
is now doing with such alacrity.A few
years ago, the prevailing liberal ideology considered Daniel Ellsberg and the New York Times heroes for having
published the Pentagon Papers.We are
paying the price today.

It is
ironic that one of the changes in public attitudes that the Left has insisted
upon is now serving as an unintended shield for Admiral Poindexter and Lt. Col.
North.There was a time when everyone
knew that a person had a Constitutional right to “take the Fifth,” but when
everyone also felt that it was not a respectable thing to do and knew that
inferences of guilt could quite logically be drawn for every purpose except
formal conviction in court.

The Left
succeeded thirty years ago in wiping away this “prejudice.”If there is any humor to be had in the
current situation, it is the surprising turning of the tables that today allows
administration officials to invoke the Fifth Amendment without the media
thereby being able to make much out of it.

If somehow
out of all the furor the American public could come to learn these lessons and
come to see the structural forces at work, the “crisis of the Reagan
presidency” will have served a most useful purpose.But for that to happen, countless people will
have to speak up from a perspective that is very different from that in which
the “scandal” has so far been cast.Politicians will have to find some backbone; the adversarial media will
have to be overridden by a chorus of common sense.

That this
will indeed happen seems impossible.But
I would have us reflect on the implications if it does not.It will mean, in effect, that the optimism
that Ronald Reagan articulated about America in his first inaugural address and
that he has repeated throughout his presidency has itself been an illusion, a
bit of wishful thinking by a man of profound decency.It will suggest that in the long run the
Reagan presidency will have been no more than a temporary respite from the
slide away from traditional American values.It will mean that the chaos formed out of the interplay between an
alienated intellectual culture and a silent, inarticulate majority will
prevail.

To those
who sense the dangers, far more is at stake in the current crisis than many
people imagine.